The first thing you need to know when budgeting your web design costs, is deciding on what you need. There are several things that can cost you money, including:

Is this a new site or a redesign?

Do you need blog or content management functionality?

Do you have graphics already created for the site? Or are you using a template? Or do you need completely custom images created?

How are you planning on servicing mobile customers?

Do you need multimedia (Flash, video, etc.) on the site?

How much content do you have and how much do you need created?

Do you need other special features like social media, SEO, ecommerce?

And who is going to maintain the site?

Click through the tabs above and I will go into details about all these things, and a general idea of how much you should budget for them. The prices I list are based on my experience and prices may be higher or lower in your area.

If you’re starting your web design from scratch, then so is the web designer. Since they have nothing to work off of, they can’t look at your site and get an idea of what you already love or hate.

One of the advantages to starting from scratch however, is that you can work with the designer to get the exact site that you want. But you should assume that you’re going to pay at least an additional $100 more than if you were redesigning an existing website.

For your budget, you should include at least $500 as a base cost for building a site from scratch, and $200 if you’re looking at a redesign.

If you’re already running a WordPress site, then you already have the advantage of some type of content management on your site. However, these CMS tools (including WordPress, Joomla!, and Drupal) have their own challenges and can prove difficult for the beginner.

Creating a site using these tools takes more time than building a site from scratch because you have to integrate the designs into the CMS systems.

Also, don’t assume that if you already have a WordPress theme it should be cheaper. Many WP themes are sold as-is and designers are not licensed to change them. Often, the cost of purchasing a theme that can be modified is as expensive as just building a new theme from scratch.

Your budget should include another $200 if you want a blog or CMS. Include this in your budget even if you already have the system running. If you don’t have it running, you should plan to include another $200 to get it installed and running.

Graphics are tricky because they can be difficult to create and stock images can be expensive. However, you don’t want to skimp on the graphics of your site, as graphics can cause you more grief down the road if you’re not careful.

If you provide all of the images and graphics, you will still need to set aside a budget to get those images integrated into the new design (budget at least $200).

And don’t assume that if you’ve already got a template you want to use that you won’t need any images re-done. Customizing templates can take time, and you want to be sure that the designer has the rights to customize the images in the template.

If you go this route, then you should budget $400. And if you’re looking for the design firm to create an entirely new design and images for you, you should then budget at least $1000.

In addition to images, you will probably also need icons and buttons created to go with your design. Budget $300 for them. Any other custom images you need you should budget another $400. The more images that you need, the more money you should budget.

You should always make sure that your designer uses licensed stock images or creates brand new graphics for your site. Be sure to get the license information in writing for any images you will use on your site. Otherwise, you could be looking at a several thousand dollar bill from a stock photo company down the road. If your designer is going to add stock photos, budget at least $100 per photo—and remember that this could be an annual fee.

Mobile devices are becoming more and more popular and your website design should incorporate a mobile version that serves mobile customers.

The best website designs are responsive to the device viewing the page, but creating that type of design is difficult and will cost more than a simple site for a desktop web browser.

The best websites are designed to handle at least three different device sizes: smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers.

You should budget $500 to get a responsive design, and expect to add on $100 per device size (such as tablet in landscape and portrait) beyond the basic three. Comtech provides responsive mobile friendly web designs for all of our clients.

The most cost-effective way to get content, is to create all the content yourself and add it into the site yourself. Most designers have no problem delivering a design template that you can populate content into for no additional cost.

However, if you want the design firm to add the content you’ve already got into the site, you should budget around $150 per page of typed content (more if they have to type it in) and $300 per page if you want them to create the content for you as well.

With the website elements listed so far, you will have a website that most people would agree is sufficient. However, there are a lot of extra features that many designers can provide that will up the price, but can also improve your business. Some examples include:

Site membership and registration $500

Forums or chat rooms $300

News feeds of both your content (outgoing) and adding content to the site (incoming) $400

Websites don’t just build themselves, and the best websites are changing and adding content all the time. Website maintenance is something that most businesses forget to budget. Or if they remember, they think that they’ll just do it themselves.

But the first time you delete your entire home page by mistake and lose 8 hours of sales trying to get it back up and running, you’ll wish you’d spent the extra money on a maintenance contract.

Maintenance contracts will vary in price greatly depending upon what you expect from the web design firm. You should budget a minimum of $50 per month to have a designer on call if you have a problem that you can’t fix.

And if you expect them to do additional work such as creating new images, adding new content, maintaining social media or newsletters, etc. expect the price to go up.

Features

Basic Site

Extras

Full Site

Content Management or Blog

$200

$200

$700

Basic graphics

$200

$400

$1000

Additional graphics

$300

$300

$400

Total:

$1200

$1400

$2800

Adding in additional features increases the price.

Features

Extras

Full Site

Mobile

$500

$700 (two extra devices)

Multimedia

$500

$1000

Content

$750 (adding 5 pages)

$1500 (creating 5 pages)

Extras

$500

$5000 (or more)

Maintenance

$50 per month

$500 per month

Total

$1800 ($50 monthly)

$9200 ($500 monthly)

Keep in mind that these are estimates only based on general prices across the board. All custom web designs have to be priced per individual website and vary in price.

Variable Data Printing

Variable data printing allows you to change names, dates, messages, photos, and more for each individual mail piece in a single print run. This customization not only captures attention, but contains content that is relevant to each unique recipient.

You are unique.

So are the other 315 million people in the U.S. So why send the exact same mail piece to every recipient? Variable data printing allows you to change photos, messages, maps, and more for each individual mail piece in a single print run.

Offset Printing

If you need to print a large quantity of postcards, mailers etc, then offset printing will be the way to go. This is the highest quality printing available and will make your collateral pieces really stand out. We can print on a variety of different paper stocks and coatings to make even the most demanding customer very satisfied.

The Best Option.

If you're looking for high quality, high quantity printing then Offset Printing is the way to go.

Digital Printing

Digital printing is for those customers that want to print a smaller run, while still getting the highest possible quality too. Simply provide us with a disk on file so that we can print directly from disk. Or you can upload your file directly from our website and let us take it from there.

The Best Option.

For smaller quantity, or custom printing with quick turn-around and less waste, then Digital Printing will better suite your needs.

Personalized Letters

The best way to get customers to respond to your letters, is to make them personal and customized. Having your own personalized letter will make your marketing stand out from the crowd and get results.

No need to send a generic form letter.

Envelope Printing

Why send the same old boring envelope? At Comtech, we can print your own personalized envelopes and have your brand name on each one. Let Comtech print envelopes that have your custom logos or graphics or anything else that you can dream up.

Add some visual flair to your envelope.

Not only can we print mailing information and Intelligent Mail Barcodes, but also custom messaging, graphics, and company logos.

Inkjet Addressing.

Let Comtech use our Inkjet Addressing for your marketing. Addressing can be completed on coated, uncoated and heavy stocks (even aqueous and UV coated). This type of inkjet addressing will not smear, like most other address printing.

Websites that are built these days in the 21st century, have to be able to look good on all devices.

Mobile devices like iphones, ipads, blackberry, android etc all have different screen resolutions and all need to be taken into account when building your webpage.

Gone are the days of just throwing up a desktop website and calling it a day. Google has done the latest research, and they say that over 20% of internet searches are done using a mobile device.

So if your website doesn't have a separate mobile website that is redirected whenever a mobile device calls up your domain, then your businesses website will look horrible.

The best option to build a website so that it looks good on any screen, is to make your website Responsive.

Responsive Web Design, is a technique that allows your webpage to shrink of fit to any browser and any device that views your webpage, so that it conforms to the exact dimensions of numerous screen resolutions and still looks great. In other words, your website responds to the devices' screen and conforms to which ever screen is viewing it. This eliminates the need to have another mobile site built, and also tells google that your site is ok for mobile which helps your rankings on google's mobile platform.

Variable Data Printing

Variable data printing allows you to change names, dates, messages, photos, and more for each individual mail piece in a single print run. This customization not only captures attention, but contains content that is relevant to each unique recipient.

You are unique.

So are the other 315 million people in the U.S. So why send the exact same mail piece to every recipient? Variable data printing allows you to change photos, messages, maps, and more for each individual mail piece in a single print run.

If you need to print a large quantity of postcards, mailers etc, then offset printing will be the way to go. This is the highest quality printing available and will make your collateral pieces really stand out. We can print on a variety of different paper stocks and coatings to make even the most demanding customer very satisfied.

The Best Option.

If you're looking for high quality, high quantity printing then Offset Printing is the way to go.

Digital printing is for those customers that want to print a lower quantity, while still getting the highest possible quality too. Simply provide us with a disk on file so that we can print directly from disk. Or you can upload your file directly from our website and let us take it from there.

The Best Option.

For smaller quantity, or custom printing with quick turn-around and less waste, then Digital Printing will better suite your needs.